DeYOUNG, HARRY ANTHONY

Harry Anthony DeYoung was born in Chicago in 1893. He was in his
mid-thirties when he came to Texas and had already made his mark in the art
world. A graduate of University of Illinois and Chicago Art Institute, as an
honor student, he went on to teach for the next few years in the Midwest.
His landscapes (oils) hung in several fine collections but his art had, by
the late 1920's, made him no more than a living. He suffered a nervous
breakdown so in 1928 he moved to San Antonio hoping to improve his health
and that of his daughter who was a sickly child.He was principally a
landscape artist so Sa Antonio proved a happy choice for DeYoung because of
a connection he made with the Witte Museum, where he subsequently did much
work. His murals may be seen there and also at the St. Anthony Hotel. One
quite famous painting of Davy Crockett in the siege hangs in the Alamo; and
three portraits of James Bonham, Dr. Amos Pollard, and Mrs. John
Dickinson.From 1928 until his health failed in 1942, DeYoung was a
teacher of art in studios in San Antonio or in summer art camps. He founded
and directed DeYoung Painting Camp in the Davis Mountains, and instructed at
camps held in the Hill Country, the Big Bend area and in South Texas, at
Port Isabel.During the first years in Texas, the DeYoungs lived in
Boerne and he commuted to his San Antonio classes. On week-ends he would put
his wife and daughter in the car and tour the back roads of the Boerne area,
looking for sketch subjects. He developed a great love for the Hill Country,
and for frontier culture. ( The result of this is the collection of the
"Privy drawings" he sketched in the Boerne-Comfort area that are now
compiled in the book "Texas Out Back")In 1942, DeYoung had a stroke. His
right side was paralized completely. He was not yet fifty. He refused to
give up his art so he taught himself to paint left-handed and painted that
way until his death in 1956, at the age of sixty-two. - from the
Introduction to "Texas Out Back", by Leon Hale in collaboration with Anita
DeYoung Ischar.